"Death is not a societal necessity"

The state of Georgia is once again going to set an execution date for Troy Davis. What's wrong with that? There's a lot of evidence that Troy Davis didn't commit the crime of which he was convicted.

According to Amnesty USA, Davis was

sentenced to death for the murder of Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail at a Burger King in Savannah, Georgia; a murder he maintains he did not commit. There was no physical evidence against him and the weapon used in the crime was never found. The case against him consisted entirely of witness testimony which contained inconsistencies even at the time of the trial. Since then, all but two of the state's non-police witnesses from the trial have recanted or contradicted their testimony. Many of these witnesses have stated in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into testifying or signing statements against Troy Davis.

One of the two witnesses who has not recanted his testimony is Sylvester "Red" Coles – the principle alternative suspect, according to the defense, against whom there is new evidence implicating him as the gunman. Nine individuals have signed affidavits implicating Sylvester Coles.

Davis' case has kicked around in the courts for 20 years! For fear of "frivolous appeals" our legal system has made it extraordinarily difficult for prisoners to get relief from unjust or misguided verdicts in their original trials. So these things drag on and on. Too often, resolution simply means that the courts say what amounts to "sorry -- we took too long and we can't go back and help you." Should anyone die because the system can't be made to work?

Amnesty International has carefully studied Davis' case as an example of what's wrong with the death penalty in the United States. Their conclusion:

In the absence of judicial relief for Troy Davis, whether he lives or dies in Georgia’s execution chamber will be a political decision. There is no court order requiring that he be killed. His death is not a societal necessity. It can be stopped if the political will and moral courage can be found in those with authority and influence over the case.

To learn more about Davis and how to contact those political authorities that can make a difference, visit Amnesty USA.*** How do people come to be convicted by eye witness testimony that turns out to be not true? Apparently it happens all too often. Brandon L. Garrett has a new book, Convicting the Innocent, that explores this question. Here's an excerpt from Slate in which he looks at a case in which a young woman positively identified the wrong man as her rapist.

The trial records I looked at suggest that unsound and suggestive police identification procedures played a large and troubling role. Police used unnecessary show-ups, where they presented the eyewitness with just the defendant. Or stacked lineups to make the defendant stand out. Or offered suggestive remarks, telling the eyewitness whom to identify or to expect a suspect in a lineup. Or confirmed the witness's choice as the right one. Even well-intended, encouraging remarks, like "good job, you picked the guy," can have a dramatic effect on eyewitness memory, as psychologists have shown.

Indeed, more than one-third of the cases I looked at involved multiple eyewitnesses, as many as three or four or five eyewitnesses who all somehow misidentified the same innocent person. Further, almost half of the eyewitness identifications were cross-racial. Psychologists have long shown how eyewitnesses have greater difficulty identifying persons of another race.

Even well-intentioned police can be under pressure to arrest someone, anyone; prosecutors are judged by their conviction rate. This stuff happens. Courts can be places where mistakes, even honest ones, create injustice.

Given that reality, it seems madness that the state should be in the business of judicially killing people. Some mistakes can't be fixed, ever.

Photo by Scott Langley.